James, those bring back memories - The Regency and Bearcat scanners were very good in their day and are still being used by some persons 30 to 50 years later. As I understand it, wideband scanners actually work fairly well on narrowband frequencies as long as the adjacent channels are not being used. However, trying to locate crystals for these vintage scanners these days may be a challenge. But, seeing a 50 year old piece of domestic equipment in operation can be rewarding - especially when showing young people these days how things were "back then".

Not "old" old, but here's a weird scanner from the 90s I still have laying around - a Sony Wavehawk ICF-SC1 which I bought around 1999 or 2000. I remember not being able to afford the PC-programmable version of this radio, but it was my first 800 MHz scanner (upgraded from a Radio Shack Pro-71) and I could finally listen to the local county sheriff at the time. I also remember performing a mod that I read about on a Yahoo Groups forum which would open the frequency range up to 200 KHz - 1300 MHz which was really awesome.

Made any AM car radio into a VHF monitor radio. Car radio antenna plugged in to the back of the converter and a jumper from the converter plugged into the antenna jack on the AM car radio. Ran off one 9 volt battery, has tune range of 150 to 170 mhz and one crystal position. If using the crystal, the tuning dial then became a peaking control. Mine still works on the test bench... however, since this was mainly a tuneable wideband device, MANY different signals are all received at once because it was not very selective.

Definitely never seen a Tompkins Tunaverter before, very cool! Here's something I picked up last week - a Realistic Patrolman Pro 3A:

I found this on eBay for $35 and is in good cosmetic and working condition. Here is the original Radio Shack catalog ad from 1973 (image courtesy of RadioShackCatalogs.com). The MSRP of $179.95 is a little over $1000 today!

I got a good chuckle at that too. If you did purchase this new in 1973 though, you would indeed have had many years of use before 800 MHz, trunked, and digital systems became widespread. I don't exactly know when, but the UHF-T band was opened up for public safety land-mobile use in certain cities at some point. Growing up in the Chicago area, many suburban agencies were operating in the 470 MHz range, just above the receive range of this radio. I still hear plenty on this radio though. Phoenix metro area FD still simulcasts on the same VHF frequency they've been using for years, and the state police are still on a conventional UHF system. Rural agencies in Arizona are still largely on VHF, and with a roof antenna I can hear many of the surrounding counties. I'm currently working on fixing up this radio a bit, including replacing the bulbs on the dial. I'll post some pics in the near future when I have it all fixed up!

My current "oldies" includes operational Patrolman Pro 1 (148 to 174) mhz.) and a Patrolman Pro 2 (30 to 50 mhz). State Patrol here used to be on 42.040 and 42.420. Hot "skip" used to be on 39.500 and 39.580 . Still use it occasionally for Red Cross ERV's operating on 47.420 in disaster areas.

My current "oldies" includes operational Patrolman Pro 1 (148 to 174) mhz.) and a Patrolman Pro 2 (30 to 50 mhz). State Patrol here used to be on 42.040 and 42.420. Hot "skip" used to be on 39.500 and 39.580 . Still use it occasionally for Red Cross ERV's operating on 47.420 in disaster areas.

For many years we in the volunteer fire depts up here in northern Maine used 33.9 When skip was bad it would never shut up! Even one night had tones go off but was for a dept in another state. Still have a few of the transceivers around. Might have to dig one out and see if I can change the freq up a bit and play..experiment rather

Someone on the radioreference.com forums was kind enough to send some replacement bulbs for my Realistic Patrolman the other day. I swapped out the bad bulbs last night and the radio now has a permanent home on my desk:

While the Kenwood TKR820 is not antique, it is getting on in years. Had one in the 90's on 462.575/467.575 at 185 feet using a 10 db omni. Solid 42 miles with an 18 watt output. Still wish that I had it and the programmer to change the chipset. Anyone still using one of these?

I sold well over 800 UHF versions of them down in deep southeast Texas when I owned the GE Service Station in Kingsville. I added a DTMF microphone and a DTMF decoder and horn relay to them in order to create a "poor man's mobile phone". All incoming calls were answered 24/7 by a live operator. The operator would then dial the 4 digit code for the called party.

The user would take the mic off the hook to put the transceiver in "monitor mode" to make sure it wasn't in use, press * to get a dial tone, then key in the number they wished to call. Sending a # would then end the call and release the repeater.

Customers could buy their equipment and have our shop install it, then pay a modest $50/month for service. Alternatively they could lease the equipment for $100/month. The primary repeater was located just south of Kingsville at the top of a 680' guyed tower, and it provided sixty mile radius coverage easily. Over the years I added three additional repeaters to pretty much cover the eastern Rio Grande Valley area.

I really liked those little transceivers!

Eventually I partnered with a company in Corpus Christi and the King Ranch. We installed five channel 800 MHz EF Johnson trunking systems in six locations to provide much wider dispatch and mobile phone service. EF Johnson engineered a mobile unit for us that would auto-switch to use cellular service in those very few areas of coverage